Apple News Today
What new election results tell us about how attitudes are shifting
Wed, 02 Apr 2025
Americans are feeling uneasy about the economy. Business Insider’s Emily Stewart describes why. New election results from Wisconsin and Florida provide indications to how voters are thinking about Trump and Elon Musk. NBC News and Politico have the details. Last week, Palestinians protested Hamas in Gaza. NPR’s Daniel Estrin explains the actions’ significance. Plus, the Justice Department is seeking the death penalty in the killing of UnitedHealthcare’s CEO, Cory Booker set a record for longest speech on the Senate floor, and how one man was mistakenly deported to El Salvador. Today’s episode was hosted by Shumita Basu.
Chapter 1: What are the key topics in today's episode?
Good morning. It's Wednesday, April 2nd. I'm Shamita Basu. This is Apple News Today. On today's show, a trio of election results sends a warning sign to President Trump and the Republican Party. A rare spate of protests in Gaza against Hamas's leadership. And Senator Cory Booker breaks the record for longest ever Senate floor speech.
Chapter 2: How are tariffs affecting the U.S. economy?
But first, today, President Trump will hold an event in the Rose Garden where he'll detail plans for his next batch of tariffs. Now, Trump is no stranger to proposing, delaying, enacting and even dropping tariffs. As of March 21st, tariffs were placed on roughly $800 billion worth of goods, with many countries, including several of our allies, imposing their own tariffs back at us.
Taken all together, economists say there's little doubt consumer prices will go up and could even lead us into a recession.
Chapter 3: Why are Americans feeling uneasy about the economy?
A lot of Americans are nervous about a lot of things in the economy. That's Business Insider's Emily Stewart. If there is one word that I think kind of describes the moment, it is uncertainty, right? People are nervous about what's going to happen in the future. They're nervous about inflation. People are on edge about tariffs and economic policy.
It seems like sort of day to day, we really don't entirely know what's going on. And we also know that people are nervous about their jobs.
On paper, economic indicators are somewhat mixed. The labor market is, at least for the moment, in pretty solid shape, with unemployment rates low, historically speaking. But the stock market just had its worst month in years. And consumer confidence is way down.
According to the Conference Board, a group that tracks consumer confidence on a monthly basis, the consumer confidence index dropped by 7.2 points in March, its lowest since January of 2021.
as people's outlooks on income and business and the labor market declined, people's expectations for the future really declined to a level that tends to signal a recession. Now, that doesn't mean a recession is going to come, but people feel pretty bad.
Two-thirds of consumers believe that unemployment will increase. And when that happens, people tend to be more conservative with their spending.
The University of Michigan also does consumer sentiment surveys, and they're seeing similar things where people feel pretty bad about a lot of things. They feel bad about the economy, regardless of their age, their income, politics. What we are seeing is that people expect the unemployment rate to go up at levels that we were seeing around the Great Recession. So people are anxious.
But we're also seeing that people are nervous about their own incomes. And that is a little bit different because that's not just saying... Ugh, things are bad, but I'm OK at saying I'm worried I'm not going to be OK as well.
It's easy for Americans to blame or thank the president when it comes to how they feel about their bank accounts. Typically, the president alone doesn't really control the outlook for the economy. But Stewart says we are living in remarkable times.
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Chapter 4: What did the Wisconsin election results reveal?
President Trump has acknowledged prices will go up, but says the pain of tariffs will be worth it, with his senior trade advisor, Peter Navarro, estimating the U.S. will raise about $600 billion to $700 billion a year from tariffs. But CNBC spoke with some economists who say, in reality, the U.S. will probably bring in less than half of that. Results are in from yesterday's elections.
All three are being seen as a warning sign for President Trump and the Republican Party. In Wisconsin, Susan Crawford, a liberal circuit court judge, beat her conservative counterpart for a seat on the state Supreme Court. The race drew national attention after Elon Musk and allies spent $25 million backing Crawford's opponent, Brad Schimel, making it the most expensive judicial election in U.S.
history. Here's Crawford at her victory party last night.
Today, Wisconsinites fended off an unprecedented attack on our democracy, our fair elections, and our Supreme Court. And Wisconsin stood up and said loudly that justice does not have a price. Our courts are not for sale.
Chapter 5: How did Florida's special elections impact the Republican Party?
This means Wisconsin's Supreme Court will maintain its liberal majority. This is a nonpartisan office, but the court might take up cases with implications for national politics, like redistricting, abortion rights, and election rules, according to CBS. The court might also hear a case involving a lawsuit brought by Musk against the state of Wisconsin involving Tesla.
Crawford's victory was the latest in a string of small wins for Democrats who recently flipped state legislative seats in special elections in Iowa and Pennsylvania and defeated four Republican-backed referendums in Louisiana. The New York Times notes it's the first time the party has been on its front foot since November.
Moving on to two special elections that took place in Florida yesterday, both Republican Trump-backed candidates won their races, Randy Fine and Jimmy Petronas, shoring up Republicans' slim majority in the House. As we mentioned on yesterday's show, these are heavily Republican districts, so Democrats weren't expected to flip either seat.
But what's caught the attention of observers nationwide is the margins of those victories. The word you'll see in most coverage of these races? Underperform. Trump won both of those districts in November by more than 30 points. Patronus and Fine each won by around half of that. Here's pollster and MSNBC analyst Fernand Amandi speaking on the network about what that might mean.
You've got to be deeply, deeply concerned if you're the Republican Party right now looking at these numbers, especially given that this is still supposed to be the honeymoon, Trump at the apex of his powers. We're seeing anything but that.
It's also a reflection of turnout. Off-year, non-presidential elections often have much lower turnout. But so far, as The Times notes, Democrats seem to be doing well in lower turnout elections since Trump returned to office, meaning these types of off-year races could swing their way. CNN's conservative political analyst Scott Jennings says that matters.
Turning out these low propensity Trump-aligned voters is still a major problem for the Republicans. That's bad. And so if I'm looking out into the future, you know, the Republicans have something to work with in the House, but also something to work on as it relates to the structural nature of how the party works now. It's a major flip. This used to be the Democrats' problem.
You guys had the low propensity voters. We sort of dominated in these low turnout settings. Now it's the opposite.
Let's turn now to Gaza. Israel's defense minister is saying it plans to expand its military offensive, seize large areas of the enclave, and evacuate people in combat zones. The defense minister also urged Palestinians to remove Hamas from power. This comes on the heels of thousands of Palestinians protesting Hamas last week, holding demonstrations in the streets.
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